Social media engagement takes time to build—but it’s worth the investment. That’s why NASBP has entered an agreement with InsuranceSocial.Media, a social media management service specific to the insurance and surety industries. InsuranceSocial.Media helps its subscribers by lifting the burden of scheduling and automatically publishing social media posts with content customized for each subscriber based on the subscriber’s business and marketing goals. The agreement with InsuranceSocial.Media provides for an exclusive offer for NASBP members to enjoy a special free trial. Click here to learn about the special 60-day free trial for NASBP members. Be sure to use this coupon code NASBP19. Reach out to Elisabeth Deffner if you have questions.

Last week Elisabeth Deffner delivered a NASBP-supported webinar describing how NASBP members’ social media efforts don’t have to draw them away from sales or servicing customers—or cost an arm and a leg. Below she describes how her company, InsuranceSocial.Media, understands the nuances of the insurance and surety industries and can be a tremendous help to NASBP members who want to boost their social media efforts.

Engagement is the holy grail of social media marketing. It’s an ideal goal for surety social media marketing in particular. Why?
Because an engaged audience knows, likes, and trusts you—just like your clients know, like, and trust you as their surety agent.
So how can you increase your engagement levels on social media? How can you turn those social media relationships into real-life interactions? And how can those interactions develop into sales?

We dove into this topic in a recent NASBP-supported webinar for NASBP members, so this in this article, we’ll focus on a few types of what our InsuranceSocial.Media team calls “engagement posts”—posts with the sole purpose of eliciting engagement from our subscribers’ followers.

Think Outside Your Business

Great social media content can be inspired by events outside your agency walls—from the city and state you work in, to the national scene.

For instance, current events, local and otherwise, can provide you with a powerful hook for great posts (Construction projects! Legal decisions! Legislative developments! Weather phenomena!). These types of posts will most often pertain to different types of surety, but they could also be about something you simply think your followers might enjoy reading—like your state ranking high on a new list of great places to do business or a summer meteor shower.

You can also create “evergreen” local posts spotlighting your favorite places or activities. That allows your followers to get to know you, your business, the same way they know their social media “friends.” These types of posts make you seem more real.

It’s always a thrill to see our subscribers’ followers replying to these types of posts—and to note that, often, these local focus posts are among those getting the highest engagement.

Be Timely

Surety is all about risk management, so share tips to help your followers protect what’s most important to them. Those types of posts are at the core of surety social media marketing.

But when you time them just right, they can also get you great engagement.

Consider events that are important to your target surety markets. For instance, summer heat makes a big impact on the construction industry, so a post reminding GCs how to prevent heat-related illness could be very valuable to your followers. And although this post doesn’t even mention surety, it could help to cement your relationship with the prospects and customers who follow your social platforms—reminding them how well you know their industry, how able you are to assist them in their needs, and how reliable and trustworthy you would be as a partner to their business.

Keep holidays, observances, and commemorations in mind as you’re brainstorming timely posts. If you’re focusing on the construction industry, Infrastructure Week could be just the inspiration you need to develop a week-long campaign of posts. Focusing on fidelity bonds? October is National Crime Prevention Month—a particularly great time to share crime-prevention and crime-recovery tips.

These are the kinds of posts your followers are likely to share—tips that they can use and that they want to make sure their social media friends can take advantage of, too.

Just Ask

Social media marketing is different from other types of marketing, which you may be more accustomed to. It’s a two-way street. Think of it as getting a head start on the relationship you ultimately want to build with your customers.

So a great social media marketing technique is to request your followers’ interaction with you. Ask them a question, and remind them to post their answer in the comments. (Question posts actually get twice as many comments other text posts.. See this article.

Ask them to “Like if they agree” with a statement you’ve made. If you’re sharing tips or information that could help preserve life or property, ask your followers to share that post with their followers. It’s a conversation—so invite your followers to join in.

Have Fun

When you think about social media marketing as a task you have to take care of—one more in what is probably already a long list—it’s not easy to think about it as fun! But if you can make your posts fun, your followers are more likely to engage with those posts and to feel more connected with you and your business. So if someone brings their pooch to the office on Take Your Dog to Work Day, make sure to take a photo and post it (along with a caption about “working like a dog,” of course!). If you have an office birthday party, snap a photo of the birthday guy or gal—hopefully wearing a party hat, or grinning at a cake full of candles—and post your birthday wishes on social media. (Don’t be surprised if a lot of your followers get in on the act and comment “Many happy returns!”)

And keep your eyes open for fun-post-inspiration. In our recent webinar, Josh Etemadi (AVP of Construction Bonds, Inc. and Chair of the NASBP Automation & Technology Committee) shared a recent LinkedIn post featuring his son in hard hat and protective glasses. It was a candid shot, not planned in advance, but Josh was thinking fast and crafted a fun, personal post that also happens to be about surety. (This post also serves as a great reminder that even on LinkedIn, social media marketing isn’t—and shouldn’t be—all business, all the time. Remember, it’s called social media!)

Happy Marketing!

Elisabeth Deffner is the COO of InsuranceSocial.Media, a revolutionary automated social media marketing solution designed for the surety and insurance industries. You can reach her at elisabethd@insurancesocial.media.